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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23588266">kerosene</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/labime/pseuds/labime'>labime</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - 90s, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Dark Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, F/M, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 23:08:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,252</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23588266</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/labime/pseuds/labime</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They leave a trail of corpses behind. It’s all the news talk about day and night for a week.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>78</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Jonerys Remix 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>kerosene</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i initially wanted to write to write a bonnie and clyde au for the jonerys remix 2020 because the idea of jon and daenerys in setting where they’re serial killers is interesting to me but a natural born killers worked best when it comes to the characters, i think.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The roadside café is dirty, scattered with graying tiles that are sticky underfoot, completely black in some spots. The stools are the same, old and unwashed, and some stale odor oozes off them. Jon doubts the food will be better.</p><p>Dany swipes a finger over the dusty counter as the waitress pours coffee into Jon's cup. It only tastes slightly better than the place smells but he gulps it down. It isn't the worse thing he's had.</p><p>The waitress switches channels, a low buzz of static flickering every time she turns the button—a sitcom, another sitcom, the images sliced up and swaying, then there’s a man’s talking animatedly, then it’s some sort of horror movie and there’s a lunatic screaming, the guy playing him looking like he’s trying too hard to be scary. The movie zooms in and out and then the TV fades to black with one last push of the button.</p><p>“What kind of pies do you have?” Jon asks.</p><p>The waitress says <em>apple, pecan, cherry, key lime</em>. They chat a little and he stares at her, red hair that looks redder through his sunglasses, nametag pinned to her shirt—<em>Ygritte, </em>it reads, <em>Ygritte</em>, the waitress corrects Dany, annoyed, when she calls her Ingrid—and when she smiles her teeth are white and crooked.</p><p>He stays where he is, sitting as he waits for Ygritte to come back with the pie and the glass of non-fat milk he ordered, looking only once at Dany when she makes a beeline to the jukebox and starts dancing to the tune filling the whole place up.</p><p>Men stare at her she’s something to eat. Swift motions, her exposed skin, the way she moves her hips. Jon doesn’t comment on the cowboy who seems to be panting now, whose cock’s strained against his pants as he looks at Jon’s wife. It’s expected, it’s part of the game. The two men who swoop in are expected, too. It’s almost mundane now, doesn’t elicit the surge of excitement they got, first, when they started doing it, the kind of high that punched in when they were still unsure of what they’d do next, after. After, they killed the first person, after they ran with the money, after they drove off the road.</p><p>There were a few close calls, back then, and each time it made things better.</p><p>This is nice, though. Better than nice, because the newcomer started dancing with Dany and Jon’s blood boils when he sees the man angles his beer like it’s a cock, circles her suggestively. He can’t follow her moves and Jon sees with satisfaction he’s just pathetic as shit and nothing else.</p><p>“I call it pussy,” Mero says after Jon said, <em>Dany. Dany Whatever</em>, like he really didn't give a fuck. Jon downs his milk, feels his anger settles like a needle in his guts,cold and sharp, and he thinks this might prove to be more satisfying than he'd thought, already visualizes himself splattered with blood and her with him. Always with him.</p><p>It's pretty distracting, mind-mumbling, even, the unwanted jealousy he feels, even when knows they're just playing and this is all an act, that she already would have had the guy's brain on the floor if they'd meet them any other day.</p><p>The guy—Daario or something, Jon doesn't bother learning his name the same way Dany misspelled Ygritte's name on purpose—takes a swing, lips still on the bottle when it shatters, Dany's slim fist colliding with it. She laughs and Daario tries to laugh with her even when Dany gets in another punch but he stumbles back and she kicks him in the stomach. Mero’s still drinking his beer, unconcerned because Daario’s acting like’s it’s nothing, can’t look like he’s having his ass handed to him by a slip of a girl who’s yelling and making faces, mean and unhinged. “Your move. Your move, fucker. Go.”</p><p>He takes it in stride, raises up his fists, would have probably put up a better fight if he hadn’t underestimated her. He grunts and whimpers and falls onto a booth. He is hauled off and back down on his ass just as after he got to his feet.</p><p>“<em>Down</em>,” she says, mocking, vicious, no longer playing coy. There’s wood splintered around Daario’s hunched body. His back connected with it first and then crashed into the cheap tables and chair, knocking a few over.</p><p>His skull bangs against the linoleum table, crunched down with blinding force, blood splashed everywhere, dripping on the floor, water bottles and plates rolling down with it.</p><p>“Shit,” Mero swears and gets up, finally alarmed. Jon grabs his arm, his instincts taking over. "You son of a bitch," he starts to say, face furious, cries out when Jon's buck knife dashes down on his finger. It's as natural as gasping after being underwater, as easy as shooting a bunny or throwing a knife between a bull's eyes.</p><p>The man screams. The jagged limb jerks, then lays still on the tip of his boot, wet and hot, spurting blood. He barely gets to kick it off his foot, clutching his mangled hand, the shock effectively freezing his limbs.</p><p>"Because she's mopping the floor with your buddy is no reason to join in," Jon says, twirling his blade.</p><p>He stands gaping, eyes wide, when Jon slices into his chest, thrust the knife in and out and in and out, revels in the squish of the wounds.</p><p>He strips off his jacket, fires at the cook, watches the bullet burrowing straight between her eyes, into her fat forehead. Another splatter of crimson, reaching up the ceiling this time, and Jon contemplates his work for a second.</p><p>He looks over at Dany who's still restless, who's pulling Daario's body up and down like it's a ragdoll, pushing him into a window, jumping on his back, stomping him. "How sexy I am now? Huh?" she keeps saying, words strangled with rage, frantic now that she can unleash it. "Flirty boy! How sexy I am now?"</p><p>From the corner of his eye, he sees another guy, who came with the broken pickup and is currently staring up in horror as Dany crushes his friend's head that barely looks like a head anymore, fluids bursting out of it, small bones skidding off at each impact. Jon unsheathes his knife once again, aims with speed and precision and flings it. It hits the screaming, running man smack-dab in the back. He drops dead, screams and doesn't move anymore. Jon's thinking about the knife. It’s his favorite and he will have to retrieve it and wipe it off his sleeve, once they're finished here.</p><p>He eats the last chunk of green pecan pie and steps into a puddle of wet blood and piss as he comes up the cash register, folds the money bills into tight bundles and reminds Dany that the guy’s dead, fond and indulgent because it’s not like it’s news for her. She kicks one last time and lets go, still raging, both contented and bloodthirsty.</p><p>She hops into Jon’s arms, her legs wrapped around his waist, his arms catching him immediately. She’s about to kiss him when the waitress breaks the moment, already on her way out, barefoot and terrified. Dany slides off and screams <em>no</em>, that there’s no escaping, and if it’s something she had to learn in life then it should be something everyone else should learn too.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Who’s the lucky one?” Jon asks.</p><p>Dany already decided, ever since the bitch has been making eyes at her husband. Still, she puts on a show, stalls the end of the day. The acute rush of the last murder hasn’t tamped down yet, the guy’s blood still warm and sticky, and Dany wants it again.</p><p>“Eanie, meanie, minie, moe, catch a redneck by the toe. If he hollers, let him go. Eanie, meanie, minie, moe. My mom told me to pick the best one and <em>you are it</em>,” Dany singsongs, voices getting louder, fevered, feeling vindicated when the redhead starts crying, pleading.</p><p>The game was rigged since the beginning but who’s here to mediate. Jon’s aim wavers, changes with their game’s dubious end, waits to her to choose who she’s gonna pick. The redhead's holding a coffee pot like it’s going to save her and for that alone Dany would have killed, anyway.</p><p>The body thuds down. The last today.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They drive all the time, day and night, because leaving a witness behind to tell what happened is entertaining but they can't risk being caught so soon after killing. It's fine because New Mexico is huge and most of the time Jon and Daenerys don't even run into another car for miles. Everyone's out for themselves, everyone minding their business.</p><p>So it’s just the two of them most of the time and Daenerys likes it like that, driving the deserted, uneven roads, dust and sand baking under the sun. Everything’s rotting on the road, the bone-dry animals, the brown trees, the corpses left behind, and she goes on without one look behind.</p><p>The days are one indistinct blur of pale yellow and brown with flashes of red, occasionally. A car, a gun, a wig, a duffle bag full of rumpled clothes, and the never-ending roads. Daenerys wouldn’t have it any other way. She means it.</p><p>For their belated honeymoon, they go to Las Vegas, Nevada. They keep a low profile there and use fake names when they check into one of the few motels hasn't a <em>NO VACANCY</em> neon sign on. They cheat at card games with college kids and laugh after at how dumb they are, showing the money into her purse and then wasting ir thoughtlessly. They get a new a new shoulder holster and a leather jacket for him, a new dress and overpriced shoes for her. They drink themselves to sleep and wake up in the bed, in old sheets she'd bet haven't been clean for months.</p><p>She gives Jon a blowjob and he fists his hand into her hair, hisses low and deep as he hits the back of her throat, still a little sleepy. It’s fading fast and he bucks into her mouth, grunts out her name. “Fuck, Dany.”</p><p><em>DanyDanyDanyDany</em>, as she swallows around him, her hair parted into two ropes, each tightly wound around his hands. And he says her name like it's a payer, except she doesn't think he ever said the Lord's name like this when he went to church every Sunday. His grip tightens as he pumps he hips down and then tangles loosely after he's come in her mouth.</p><p>He goes down on her, licks her out until she’s squirming and her thighs are trembling around his shoulders, vice-like, her heels digging into his back, her toes curling.</p><p>They order in and snack on Thai food, fuck and nap, and only come out of the bedroom to buy some pot and some gin. They get banned from a casino after Jon tries to count the cards, and not being subtle by the look of it, so they get shit-faced to save the night from being completely ruined.</p><p>They do it all week and she almost forgets about killing.</p><p>On Monday she feels pretty sick and decides she will take something for her queasy stomach, her breath coming faster as she steps down the stairs. The man at the front desk is just <em>rude</em>, doesn’t take his eyes off the TV that’s blaring on. It’s a soccer match and the clerk is watching it while eating chicken wings, his white undershirt stained with sauce and grease. He reminds her so much of her dad she doesn’t stop to think.</p><p>They made plans, Jon and her, and they like it here so they intended to stay a couple more days but she doesn't care right now. Nothing can be better than that, the soundless scream from someone who can't breathe, who got a fork in his throat blocking his airways. He's trying to reach for something under the desk, flailing. An alarm, she thinks, and she whips out a knife to pin his hand with. If possible, his eyes get bigger further. Comically big. He gasps, kicks, tries to say something, tears welling up his big fucking eyes.</p><p>“You stupid bitch,” Daenerys taunts, her teeth clenched. “<em>You stupid bitch</em>.”</p><p>He doesn’t get it but she doesn’t care. <em>You stupid bitch</em>, she repeats, until she’s done and he’s dead.</p><p>She stammers something about going somewhere else once she’s back in their motel room and Jon’s notices the blood drizzling down her fingers and points at it, chewing around a mouthful of hamburger. She shrugs and says that the guy looked at her funny and she’s doesn’t like to lie to Jon but it isn’t exactly lying. The guy had done it but it’s not why she killed him. He dips his fries in ketchup and balls his lunch up, scrubbing his hands off with the towel Daenerys throws at him.</p><p>Time to go.</p><p>(He drapes his jacket over her shoulders and they act like they have nothing to hide but no one's paying much attention. If someone discovers the clerk's body, they are not here to see it. They go back to New Mexico, back to the sandy roads that twist and turn. It's what they know best, and predators are hard to kill in their own territory.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She remembers flashes, scraps of papers with nonsense scrawled on, too fast to quite figure out where they begin and where they end and sometimes it’s like a movie and the speed doesn’t quite match her memories. Every so often, she sees it through a sepia filter. The images shake in their frames and when she tries to rewind there are shots missing and she doesn’t know how she’s come from one point to another.</p><p>The story is never the same every time she remembers it.</p><p>There's a little girl—beautiful, beautiful little girl—who is who has been told she is too pretty like an apology one too many times. Her dad told her that when he slipped under the covers, and her mom looked away when Dany told her. This is a horror movie, not a thriller or a survival movie, because the violence is senseless, gratuitous.</p><p>Maybe it’s a fairy tale—</p><p>The golden prince is already dead and she can’t remember him but she can remember when her mother wasn’t popping pills to stop crying.</p><p>There’s a monster her bed who crawls up to her at night, and day, and when she comes back from school with her pink backpack. He tells her to sit on daddy’s lap and tells that she is <em>so, so pretty</em>. It happens to a little girl and that's maybe why Dany can still remember it like that, like there's some hope to be found in this, with the innocent expectation that someone is going to find out and save her. But the teacher's job stops when the school bell ring and no one's looking too hard into the Targaryens' family.</p><p>There no fairy, no knight, no well-meaning old lady to help. She lives out the fairy tale and gets to see what happens when there’s no Happily Ever After.</p><p>Sometimes it’s a teen movie—</p><p>A coming of age kind of story told so often you know what you're getting into. In this, she's the rebellious kid. Her dad tells her she's his, touch her ass and cup her between her legs, fucks her rough to make up for his poor stamina, his imminent impotency, and she wants to get back at him. So she sneaks out of the house, gets drunk with older men who don't care about her and doesn't even pretend to because they take a look at her and knows what she is really made of, the daddy issues, the insecurities, the hopeless need to have someone touch her without hurting.</p><p>She knows they're using her and she isn't sure how she feels about that because she's using them too so it's a win-win sort of situation and she's enjoying her private defiance too much to give it up.</p><p>She can be ditsy and mean and careless and by the end of the story, she hasn’t learned one damn thing so she has to invent something. She impersonates a femme fatal, a popular girl, a mean girl, anything but a broken girl.</p><p>Anything so she can forget her dad’s not the only who sticks his dick in her and puts up a finger to lips to tell her to be <em>quiet</em>. Her brother is just like their father.</p><p>Or, it’s a sitcom—</p><p>She loves sitcoms because they're hilarious and entertaining and her head empties as she watches the bad acting and the bad jokes. She got the starring role and it should be awesome but it sucks because it's filmed in front of a live audience and they all laugh at Dany' tough luck and no one considers why it's funny because they're expected to find it funny and—</p><p>Her father's grabby hands are kneading her ass, his pallid eyes shimmering with hunger, telling her to get clean, that he will check later. Viserys winks knowingly as if to say he's next, and Dany runs to her bedroom, sobbing.</p><p>She’s pretending to be someone else. She wants to be the stupid, useless girls of the movies. She’d have their problems, then. The godawful love triangles, the bad grades and disappointed parents, the fights with her best friends over the same boy.</p><p>The audience bursts out laughing, unsynchronized, not suitable for the story she’s trying hard to force into a format it isn’t meant to.</p><p>It’s a romance movie—</p><p>It’s the Hollywood kind of too-perfect-to-be-true romance movie, <em>Singin' in the Rain</em> and <em>West Side Story</em> all at once. He comes in, shuffling on his feet, several pounds of meat heavy in his arms, scuffed shoes and blood-soiled apron. He gives her a thorough once over, all cheesy one-liners and pick up lines, awkward and unsure, and she falls for him. The tape is all black-and-white monochrome now, panning on them, their first meeting, the looks they share.</p><p>When he asks if she wanna go for a ride because she doesn't look happy, she's already in too deep. She smiles, puffs out a small laugh, and nods. She doesn't want to see past what he's showing her, but she knows he's hiding the same thing she is, a broken kid who's stuck inside his childhood house, hoping to be small and unseen so he won't get a beating for breathing too hard.</p><p>She knows he is trouble when he grabs her dad's car key and steals his car to go to the nearest restaurant. She lets him pay for her even though she knows he can't afford it, lets kiss her like he yearns for it, lets him drives her forty minutes out her small town and take the fastest route to go somewhere else. When she wonders out loud where they're going he says he got some friends who got extra beds they can crash on.</p><p>They never make it to the open road. Her dad called the cops on them and she should have seen it coming but she didn’t and now Jon’s getting handcuffed by the police as she is wriggling and kicking and screaming and asking to go with him, the cop holding her by behind looking both unfazed and exasperated.</p><p>(This ended up on the cutting-room floor. The final shot is her and him on a bridge, getting married, swearing they will love each other forever. It swallows the movie whole.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They’re in her father's car, the night before he got arrested and imprisoned for grand theft auto, and she realizes she has no clue what he's expecting from her when she palms his cock through his pants and he shakes his head no.</p><p>“I don’t want to do this,” he says, looking flustered. “I mean—I want this, but not like that, you know? I mean, that’s not why I took you out for a ride.”</p><p>But if that's not why then she doesn't get it. All guys want to same things. The guys who fucked her senseless after concerts, the guys who asked her out and brought her pretty stuff and then asked her to get on her knees, even the guys she knows aren't supposed to fuck her. Her teachers, her father, her brother.</p><p>Dany straightens up and peers up at him, minutely, unsure and a little embarrassed but she can’t bring herself to ask why he took her for a ride then. It’d made her look young and naive and she’s neither. In the end, she shrugs and rolls with it, jabs the car radio button in and turns up the volume of some rock music, smiles and asks what’s his favorite band.</p><p>It’s a <em>date</em> date and she's never been on one of these but she likes it. He makes her laugh and smiles and she's having a real good time. When tells her she's the most beautiful girl he's ever seen and her whole face heats which is ridiculous but it's what convinces her she will go with him when he tells her he has friends in Ponca City, Oklahoma.</p><p>“We can stay there for a while,” he suggests, slouching down in his seat, not looking at her. He’s not sure what her answer will be.</p><p>The air is surprisingly chilly that night and she shivers. She watches the smoke rises from the cigarette he takes a drag of, spilling out of his chapped lips when he exhales, musky and bitter.</p><p>She slides a leg out of the car window and pretends to think about that. She refrains from answering long enough, teasing, and then bounceson the front seat and says yes.</p><p>He pulls her in for a kiss, greedy lips moving carefully against her. She kisses back, doesn't stop when her lips swell against his, slips her tongue into his mouth and moans when he buries his hand in her hair. At some point, she wants more. She bites his lower lip and tastes blood, and he kisses her harder. There's no tenderness left in the kiss.</p><p>She thinks she's losing it when he goes to jail. She’s suddenly back to that suffocating town, in that fucking horror house, and she can't see the man she loves. She tries to. She gets on the first bus to the correctional center and warns Jon she won't come anymore, that her father's moving them away. She doesn't tell him how angry he got when the cops sent her back home, how her she couldn't eat for days because her jaw hurt so much.</p><p>Despite what he says, she thinks Jon’s going to bail on her, if she’s honest. He will do his time and do some thinking and understand she isn’t worth it. She won’t be able to swing by anymore and he will forget and find someone else once he’s out and she can’t exactly blame him for that because her dad is the scariest person she knows and she, too, wouldn’t want to get involved with her messed up family.</p><p>Her father expects everything to go back to normal but she finds herself fighting back more and more and he notices it. Viserys, too. One night her brother tells her to suck him off or he will tell their dad she was out all night and has booked a concert ticket for next Saturday and Dany seizes the baseball bat under her pillow and hits his face, the satisfaction overwhelming and short-lived. Viserys is shouting and then their dad storms in and demand to know what the hell is going on.</p><p>Viserys gestures to his broken nose, whining like a baby and their dad is about to backhand her when she yells that he wanted her to suck him off.</p><p>He strikes him.</p><p>He falls to the floor and hollers in pain, clasping his nose. Their father is yelling that he needs to keep his hands off her because she's his and only his and she feels her fury bubbles up inside her until she can taste on her tongue. They're arguing now, Viserys back on his feet, spitting that their dad ought to share, that it's not fair their he hogs her all for himself. She blind, in a daze, a lump forming in her throat, like she's seeing this happen from another perspective. Like a movie.</p><p>She waits it out, the two of them fighting over her like two wild dogs over a thrown bone and when it's over and Viserys slammed his door shut, her dad tells her to go to sleep, that he will come to her later.</p><p>She dozes off, eventually, and when she wakes up to the sound of tires screeching and headlights flaring, filtering into her bedroom. She hops off the bed, quick and alert, sucks in a deep breath and smiles wide, her fingers<em> tap-tap-tap </em>against the windowsill. Sherun her eyes over the car and the man getting out of it.</p><p>She almost loses her footing in her eagerness to pack everything she owns into two small suitcases and make her way downstairs.</p><p>“Where do you think you’re going?” her father asks, unconcerned, dispassionate. The boxing match he’s watching is still on and he doesn’t want to miss the good stuff.</p><p>“I’m going out,” she shrieks, feral, mustering up all her courage for this. She doesn’t cower when he mutters that no, she isn’t, but she’s close to, her knuckles ice-white around the handles, positioning herself for a fight. Or to make a break for it.</p><p>She loves Jon, she really does, but she knows half of it boils down to that night. Her love turns into something tougher than love, more than fervent adoration, and it’s fueled by her gratefulness. No one ever came back for her before. All those years she was craving affection through the narrowing opening her father’s influence permitted and now that she’s found it she’s drunk on it, no longer feels like a broken, hollowed out thing to be used.</p><p>She hugs Jon and kisses his cheek but he doesn’t take his eyes off her father. He looks ready to fight and he’s big and riled up, his balding head glistening with sweat. Jon clenches the handle. In a perfect split of a moment, everything is alright, then everything spins around when they fight and Dany screams, feverish and mindless with the fury she nursed in a tight, tied-up chest.</p><p>“You stupid bitch,” she repeats. He spat it at her too many times, when she cried and when she smiled, when the bedroom walls closed in on her and she begged <em>please, no, no that, please don</em><em>’t do that</em>. “You stupid bitch.”</p><p>They kill her father, drown him in the aquarium, hold his head down. She watches the bubbles come out through his nose and his gaping mouth and he’s jerking like a pig at the slaughterhouse, looks like one, too. She wonders how she could have ever been afraid of him.</p><p>Her father’s dead. Fishes swimming lazily around his head. She processes it slowly, exhaling sharply. She says it to see how it feels when it’s true, leaping up and down in a frenzy.</p><p>Her brother is next. They douse him with gasoline and watch him blaze up like a fucking bonfire on July fourth.</p><p>When she tiptoes into the master's bedroom, her mother is sleeping, knees drawn up to her chest.</p><p>She always tried taking the least space like it could make her invisible. It was a good strategy, most of the time. She learned that when she around the same age Dany was, the first time, how her husband—brother, then—had peculiar tastes and that he liked nothing more than having a struggling girl underneath him. So, Rhaella stayed out of his way, most the time, always in the background, silent and motionless. She could have been a lamp or a table and it would have made no difference.</p><p>Dany imagined being untouched sometimes, having a childhood to fall back on and knowing what saying no felt like when it meant something. What would she have said if she'd been told to show where she was hurt on a doll? See, here, between the legs, between the ribs, everywhere. The acrid what-ifs are the worst. What if her mom didn't let him? What if Rhaegar stayed? What if Elia hadn't taken off after her husband ditched her for a teen girl and left her alone to take care of their kids, no longer any ties binding her to a family she despised?</p><p>Dany recalls the morning after her father first hurt her at night, how her mother went into her bedroom when she could finally imposes herself to look at her and said that she was sorry and Dany said back that she hadn’t done anything and it wasn’t her fault. Her mother had sobbed while she combed her hair. Dany understood only years later it was exactly why it was her fault. She had done nothing to protect her and Dany doesn’t think she will forgive her for that but she still spares her.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They don't plan to kill again because they don’t plan anything. But it keeps happening. They're at the grocery store and Jon's pulling a couple of twenties out of his pockets and the asshole at the counter is shaking his head, telling them they're short of a few dollars.</p><p>He had it coming.</p><p>It doesn't go over well, they're messy and unprepared and they are almost caught. They have to hide for who a whole week. They hit a few other snags after yhid but then they get better at covering their tracks. She dyes her hair black and they buy clothes to fit their new personas. She switches to wigs when her hair starts falling off and they trade cars because theirs is too recognizable.</p><p>They evade the cops, the town, and the fun begins.</p><p>They get a little cocky after the seventh murder. They leave a trail of corpses behind. It’s all the news talk about day and night for a week, the fashionable murder couple the police can’t catch. They give their names after the killings, order the poor fucker left after the massacres to tell everyone who did it. It makes the cops look like incompetent fools, which—they are. Journalists are having a field day. Newspapers are printing non-stop and people are buying all of it, soon there’s a special edition focusing on them and people still ask for more.</p><p>"We famous, baby," she says, high as fuck, head lolling against the headboard. The room splits up, one version blurrier than the other, pulsating, speeding toward her. The vibrations drum low at her temple. She can't make out what the TV presenter blabbering about but it's their face on the news, some old photos too. Family pictures, school pictures… she wonders where they got them.</p><p>“Is that you?”</p><p>It looks like him. A little boy with curly black hair next to a redhead and a woman who seems to be the mother. He tenses, his head lifts and falls back, smacked softly against her thigh. He glares at the pregnant woman in the old photograph. “That’s me. With my cousin and my aunt.”</p><p>American Maniacs use a bit of a creative license. Sam Tarly interviews a teary-eyed cop who testifies they pulled up at a fucking doughnuts shop and just fired at his partner who'd been nice enough to give street directions. The interview is joined to the footage that is supposed to be a reenactment of the killing and Daenerys thinks the acting is terrible and the costumes worse.</p><p>“Now they’re just making shit up.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Who’s his father?” asks Lysa Tully one day.</p><p>It's summer and the sun is here to prove it, bearing down on Jon's sweaty back. His shirt is drenched already but he won't get to shower before he finishes his chores. He's a little testy that afternoon, clenches his jaw when he thinks about his cousins out all day, probably soaking their feet in the pond or reading under the big tree in Theon’s backyard. Arya offered to stay, unrelentingly loyal, but Jon said no. He didn’t want her to miss out on the fun.</p><p>Catelyn looks at him with distaste and he fakes disinterest, hoping he will get to hear what she will say.</p><p>“I don’t know.”</p><p>It’s always what she says, guarded and reserved, but the way she says it makes him think she’s hiding something. Whatever it is, she won’t tell him. She promised his uncle Ned she wouldn’t tell if he let her in on the secret.</p><p>She looks like she’s been to hell and back, dark circles under her eyes and features wrinkled by too many sleepless nights. She takes off her shoes and tilts her red feet from side to side, wriggling knobby toes. She has two full-time jobs now and she’s giving piano lessons to whoever can afford it in the neighborhood.</p><p>“I still have Bran’s hospital bills to pay,” she snaps when Lysa says she should slow down. “I also need to pay off my mortgage or we will lose the house.”</p><p>He spots Lysa leaning in, lips moving and Catelyn shakes her head. “No, he gotta stay. I promised Ned, and, anyway, he’s taking care of the little ones when I’m at work. I can’t afford a babysitter.”</p><p>It's near-impossible to stay calm but he manages. It's nothing he doesn't know but hearing it is different, having someone else see the way she treats him makes things harder as he gets older and angrier.</p><p>The first time she hit him he’d broken the porcelain plates Mrs.Tully had given Catelyn on her wedding day. He’d spun around and apologized, sputtering he was sorry as she loomed above him, a giant shadow for a seven years old boy. She broke the broomstick on his back and he’d lay curled on the floor after, trembling and holding back tears because a man doesn’t cry.</p><p>From then on, it never stopped. He always did or said something that aggravated her and she took it out on him. She became imaginative over the years, making him ingest food that was too hot and telling him he’d have nothing to eat if he didn’t, putting his hands on the stove until he cried out, whipping his belly and his legs, everywhere neighbors would notice, pulling at his hair, at his ears, at his eyelids. She stopped, recently, but it’s like holding back is eating at her and she screams more, even at Sansa.</p><p>She has taken to using words to hurt now. She talks about his mom often, calls her names, snarls that he’s a <em>bastard</em>. He’s starting to think he’s better built for psychical pain, the everyday violence, constant like a lullaby before sleeping. That’s the only thing that makes sense because he’d actually take that over her insults.</p><p>“Your mother was a <em>whore</em>," she affirms later, sprawled out on the couch, drunk. She's lost the job, fell asleep while the patrons waited for their burgers. Her boss fired her. "That's why I don't know who your father is. She broke up with her fiance to run off with a married man and she got <em>you</em> but she came back with her tail between her legs. The guy left her in a hotel room like some hooker and he didn’t come back. He didn’t come for her burial. He didn’t try to meet you, either. He’d be disappointed to see what poor excuse of a son he has.”</p><p>Jon cries, big tears rolling out of his eyes. Her words rip up into him, a stab that goes deep, down into a thousand other tiny, festering wounds, like a bullet. Like a bullet, it ends with death.</p><p>He grabs the kitchen knife and swings. He cleaves her chest open.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He falls in love with Dany the first time he lays his eyes on her.</p><p>Love blooms like a bruise.</p><p>He sees her and the world dims down to her, silver blonde hair and tentative smile and glimmering eyes. The first night he takes her out she looks like breaking hearts is her favorite pastime, like she could do it to him. They talk and he sees the cracks behind the act, her genuine surprise when he took her hand off his cock. The more he learned about her the more he fell in love, which felt like floating, giddy like a schoolboy, euphoric.</p><p>When he's in jail, her absence flanks him like a ghost. Cold, unrelenting, haunting. He doesn't forget her, just like he promised her. He never tells her he has little choice on the matter. He doesn't know how. Being in love felt like floating and being away from her is a nosedive in a cold pit.</p><p>He escapes the prison. A fluke, but he lies and brags that he's been planning it, both proud and ashamed when her eyes lighten up with admiration.</p><p>She walks with him as they left everything behind and carve nightmares of their own into blood, all over the country.</p><p>Maybe they can forget what was taken from them in someone else’s spilled blood.</p><p>(They can’t.)</p>
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